“Typically, when you go to the movies and see Star Wars laser blasters, they heat things up. This is the first example of a laser beam that will refrigerate liquids like water under everyday conditions,” senior author Dr. Peter Pauzauskie, UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering, said in a press release. “It was really an open question as to whether this could be done because normally water warms when illuminated.”

Laser refrigeration was first discovered by scientists at the National Laboratory in Los Alamos in 1995, but that process occurred under vacuum conditions. The UW researchers are the first to unlock the secret of how to use a laser to cool liquids under normal conditions.

The breakthrough was achieved by aiming a high-heat laser at a tiny crystal suspended in water. The heat was so high that it produced a glow, which then carried heat away from both the crystal and the water that contained it. In order to determine whether or not the crystal was, in fact, becoming refrigerated, they designed it so that it would change color as it cooled.

Because the laser-refrigeration process is so energy-intensive, the UW scientists have only applied its incredible powers to zap a single nanocrystal, but they want to improve the laser’s efficiency and continue their experiments.

“There’s a lot of interest in how cells divide and how molecules and enzymes function, and it’s never been possible before to refrigerate them to study their properties,” said Dr. Pauzauskie, who is also a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. “Using laser cooling, it may be possible to prepare slow-motion movies of life in action. And the advantage is that you don’t have to cool the entire cell, which could kill it or change its behavior.”

“Few people have thought about how they could use this technology to solve problems because using lasers to refrigerate liquids hasn’t been possible before,” Dr. Pauzauskie added. “We are interested in the ideas other scientists or businesses might have for how this might impact their basic research or bottom line.”

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